Ethical consumption: Uncovering personal meanings and negotiation strategies Saroja Subrahmanyan a,⇑ , Robert Stinerock b , Catherine Banbury c a Elfenworks Center for Responsible Business, Saint Mary’s College of California, School of Economics and Business Administration, 380 Moraga Road, Moraga, CA 94556, USA b Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia, Campus Campolide, 1099-032 Lisboa, Portugal c 621 Mayflower Rd., Apt. 205, Claremont, CA 91711, USA article info Article history: Received 27 December 2014 Received in revised form 30 June 2015 Accepted 1 July 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Ethical consumption Culture Researcher introspection Basic needs Enduring practices Negotiation strategies abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine how individuals define ethical consumption (EC) and then how they negotiate ethical consumption as they move from one country to another. The authors explore these questions by reporting on and interpreting the evolution of their understanding of EC and their own eth- ical consumption behavior, the EC practices that have endured over time and national contexts, the ten- sions they encountered in maintaining EC practices in these transitions and the adaptive strategies they used to manage those tensions. While there has been research on the tensions faced by individuals prac- ticing EC, there has been a paucity of research investigating those tensions from a cross-country and lon- gitudinal perspective. Moreover, although several studies have focused on EC purchase practices of specific goods (e.g., athletic shoes, fair-trade commodities), none has considered this question in the con- text of purchases of basic needs categories – food, water, energy, transportation and housing. Each of the three authors has been able to maintain his or her own personal consumption ethic in spite of living in different countries. Whenever consumption practices emanate from, and are imbedded within, a strong ethical framework of values that informs EC, each was able to make the necessary adjustments to over- come the obstacles and points of resistance across countries. Even in those situations involving consid- erable inconvenience and discomfort, each used adaptive strategies that allowed retention of their consumption practices. Among those strategies employed by the authors were choice of community in which to live, self-regulation and self-reliance. Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction This paper is an exploratory study that examines longitudinal and cross-country perspectives of what ethical consumption (EC) means to individuals when consuming every-day basic needs and how they practiced such behaviors or negotiated the tensions in these contexts. Although there have been numerous studies on this topic in the last three decades across a wide variety of disciplines, the term EC does not refer to a clearly defined set of practices, but rather a range of consumption behaviors that are motivated by several moral imperatives (Newholm and Shaw, 2007; Caruana, 2007; Carrier, 2012; Lewis, 2012). Such imperatives range from animal welfare, labor standards and human rights, health and well-being, and ecological sustainability (Lewis, 2012). However, the majority of studies on EC have been done in affluent countries in North America and Europe (see reviews by Newholm and Shaw, 2007; Cotte and Trudel, 2009) with very few cross-country com- parisons. Some notable exceptions to these include studies by Belk et al. (2005) and Devinney et al. (2010). These authors who examined EC behaviors and motivations in both affluent and poor nations in North America, Europe, Australasia, East Asia and South Asia concluded that regardless of ethical beliefs or economic status, consumers were either not concerned about ethical issues or did not behave ethically. However, in these studies, the ethics of con- sumption that are examined are those determined by the authors – use of products that harm the environment or made under poor labor conditions and counterfeit goods. Furthermore, in examining EC behaviors, these studies present specific narrow scenarios such as the purchase of athletic shoes, bath soaps or counterfeit luxury goods. Their conclusion that EC behaviors are largely a myth assumes that everyday or ordinary consumption is amoral or prac- ticed without concern for ethical considerations. However, others argue that ordinary consumption practices arise from cultural norms that an individual encounters and negotiates every day http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.07.001 0016-7185/Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ssubrahm@stmarys-ca.edu (S. Subrahmanyan), rst@novasbe.pt (R. Stinerock), banbury.catherine@gmail.com (C. Banbury). Geoforum xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Please cite this article in press as: Subrahmanyan, S., et al. Ethical consumption: Uncovering personal meanings and negotiation strategies. Geoforum (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.07.001